Martha, Martha, Martha!

Submitter: We just weeded this Martha Stewart’s Weddings book published in 1987 from our collection. It’s not horrible, we actually think it’s totally awesome 80’s. 🙂 And Martha looks so young!

Holly: Martha looks ridiculous. She has so many (sooooo many!) newer books out, including about weddings, that there’s not really any reason to hang on to this one. If the owning library has no other books by Martha Stewart, they need to get some. Her books are staples in public libraries, but they have to be more current than this. I’d go maybe ten years back.

Actually, I recently came across this book while weeding. While I agree that it’s a bit past its prime, I found it interesting to discover that 20+ year old Martha books are still better than many newer non-Martha books. However, 1987 really is rather old for a decorating book. Time for it to go!

@ Cheryl – it’s the same with cookery books by Delia Smith (the UK equivalent of Martha, minus the prison time, plus ownership of an English football club). Much more useful info in the older ones… not that it stops people buying every single new one as it comes out, in the hope that Delia will have invented something new to do with goose fat 🙂

Amazon still sells this for over $45.00. You can even search through the pages. It not only has tips for the wedding, but menu ideas and recipes as well. So, while it is old, I think it probably does have a lot of good ideas. Martha usually does!

I actually JUST pulled this book. My co-worker and I had a big debate on whether to weed it or not. When we checked the catalog, the copy in our hands had actually just been added to the collection 2 years ago. And I went on Amazon and they were still selling the book! I think we opted to give it one more year on the shelf because the Power of Stewart compelled us.

That’s definitely Martha on the cover, just younger and with longer hair.

Other than pose for the cover, though, what did Martha contribute to this book? Someone else wrote the text, and a third person took the photos, and, based on the tops of the letters, it appears that a fourth person did the design. What did Martha do?